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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29584260">to the hot guy on the plane</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/pseuds/elisela'>elisela</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>to the hot guy on the plane [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Teen Wolf (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, FBI Agent Stiles Stilinski, Fluff, M/M, Meet-Cute, Professor Derek Hale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:21:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,053</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29584260</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/pseuds/elisela</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The hottest guy Stiles have ever seen sits down next to him on the plane—but the book he's reading is so good he can't put it down.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>to the hot guy on the plane [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2173527</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>714</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>to the hot guy on the plane</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinningincircles/gifts">spinningincircles</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>part of the "lauren stop sending me tiktoks 2021 challenge" collection*</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’s on page 79. </p><p>Page 79 and it’s just getting good, the protagonist has been falsely arrested and has met someone in the holding cell, there’s tension building and Stiles can’t decide if it’s romantic or if this guy is the real murderer but he doesn’t care because it’s <em>good</em>. He’d bought the book on a whim as his flight delay seemed to stretch on without end, and now he can’t put it down—which is a problem. </p><p>“You’re a Caps fan? Do you live in DC?”</p><p>The hottest guy Stiles has <em>ever</em> seen is talking to him. He’d happened to look up as the guy boarded the plane—forest green sweater bringing out the gold flecks in his hypnotizing eyes, dark, thick scruff on his face that Stiles wants to bury himself in, and <em>glasses</em>. God, the glasses, sturdy black frames slipping down his nose and making the otherworldly hotness somehow soft and <em>approachable</em> god damn it—and then said hot guy squeezed past Stiles and eased himself into the middle seat with a grace that Stiles will never possess. </p><p>Stiles stares at him. “Uh,” he says, brain stuck somewhere between <em>get his name get his name oh my GOD get his name</em> and <em>but the police are going to tell Harlowe they found the gun any minute now</em>. It takes him a moment to understand what the guy is saying, but then he nods. “Yes. To both. One of my colleagues has season tickets, he takes me sometimes.”</p><p>“My sisters got me season tickets a few years ago,” hot guy says.</p><p>Stiles nods and glances down at his book, finger feathering the edges repeatedly. “Cool,” he says, flipping it back open and looking back at hot guy. “That’s, uh—cool.” Maybe holding cell dude is both a romantic interest <em>and</em> the murderer? He hopes not, it’s an overused trope and he’s about to become very disappointed in this book if it suddenly pivots to just churning out the same crap that’s been a staple in the genre for years. He was hoping that Harlowe would be interested in Alex, the deputy that reminded him a lot of Jordan by the description and from the way—</p><p>“Did you see the game last night?”</p><p>Stiles blinks. “The—oh. No, I’ve been in California the last few weeks.”</p><p>Hot guy looks at him with an interest that’s so obvious Stiles thinks he might die. <em>Please just make your brain work normally for once and talk to him, you can read the book later</em> he pleads with himself, but then the wheels lift off the ground and the mechanical grinding makes him think of elevators and—holy shit what if the suspect had stopped the elevator and gotten out of the top somehow? There’s always an access panel—</p><p>He looks down and flips the book back open, hunching down a little to bend his knee and bring his leg up, just managing to rest one foot on his seat and steady the book against his thigh. The bounce of the plane makes reading more difficult, makes him squint at the page as the words blur; he normally avoids reading on flights for this reason but this is the best and most realistic book he’s read in years and he just can’t put it down. The author must have experience in the field and he makes a mental note to look them up when the flight is over. </p><p>The flight from New York to DC is only an hour long and he’s most of the way through the book by the time they touch down, flipping pages almost frantically as he devours the words. Harlowe has figured out where the suspect is hiding and despite Alex telling her to stay where she is and let the professionals handle it, is on her way to the abandoned high school building that’s about to be demolished. He grabs his backpack with one hand and slides out of the row when it’s time to disembark, uses his elbow to keep himself from knocking into the rows, and keeps reading as he makes his way off the plane and to baggage claim. It’s only the loud beeping and the whir of an engine that knocks him out of his hyper focused zone and he looks up with a start, unsure of how he even navigated the damn airport without looking up once. </p><p>A flash of red and a pair of crossed hockey sticks on a logo catches his eye and he jerks his head around, suddenly remembering and hoping that hot guy is still close, but fate apparently didn’t feel like helping him out all that much because hot guy is gone, and Stiles stands there for far too long contemplating how utterly, ridiculously stupid he is. </p><p>Well. Stiles doesn’t work for the FBI for nothing—he can figure this out. He has resources at his disposal, passenger manifests that he can access and databases for nearly every agency in the country. He could absolutely get the passenger list from the airline and look up his seatmate in the DMV database, or failing that get a list of all Washington Capitals season ticket holders and cross-reference—</p><p>“No,” Lydia says the next morning, crossing her arms. </p><p>“Lydia,” he says—whines, really, but she is refusing to see how desperate he is. If he could just show her a picture—</p><p>“You cannot use government resources to find your next one night stand,” Lydia says, raising an eyebrow. “Let this be a lesson—the next time someone you’re interested in talks to you, put your book down and interact with them.”</p><p>He doesn’t know why he ever liked her. “Margot was the killer!” he yells on his way out the door, and ducks reflexively when he hears the sound of a book hitting the wall next to his head. </p><p>So much for his resources.</p><p>“He would have been so much more than a one night stand, Scotty,” he moans when they’re out at lunch, head buried in his arms. “He was like, marriage material. Dating material at least. He looked so soft, like you could spend hours cuddling him on the couch, but then you let your hands wander a little—”</p><p>“Okay,” Allison says, and he jerks his head away when she flicks his ear. “Come on, Stiles, this is pathetic. Use your head. What do you know about him?”</p><p>“He has Caps season tickets,” he says, voice muffled. “Lydia says I can’t call the front office for a list.”</p><p>“No,” Scott agreeds, “but everyone loves a love story, right? Maybe you can convince them to help.”</p><p>“That’s not a terrible idea,” Allison says, and Stiles lifts his head and looks at them, “but you’re going about it all wrong. We can’t ask the front office—but we can ask their social media department to put the word out that Stiles is the biggest moron on the face of the planet.”</p><p>And that’s how Stiles ends up with a Twitter account with a single tweet—a picture of himself in the Caps hoodie he’d been wearing and holding up the book with a message Allison had rewritten seven times before she was happy with it—apparently starting a message with “to the hot guy on the plane” isn’t good enough.</p><p>@loseronflight479: to the @Capitals fan who sat next to me on flight 479–I’m sorry I ignored you for my book. Make it up to you with coffee?</p><p>Allison’s prediction that the Caps social media manager would retweet it is correct, and by the next afternoon he has 346 new DM’s. He and Allison sit huddled at his desk, work screens showing the bank statements of the suspect they’re tracking, but really bent over the iPad that Stiles had installed Twitter on and scanning through them. They still have 113 unread messages to go when Stiles clicks on one from a girl with dark hair and nearly drops the tablet when a picture of hot guy fills the screen. </p><p>“I thought you were exaggerating,” Allison says faintly, and Stiles gapes at the screen. Hot guy is wearing a suit and if anything, he was underselling the beauty of the man. He scrolls down and lets out a whimper—there’s another picture where he’s clearly in the middle of a hike; arm thrown up to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun, gloriously sweaty and shirtless with a wide grin on his face. “You don’t deserve him,” Allison says. “I can’t believe you ignored him. Give him my number, I’d never—”</p><p>“You get your own love story,” he hisses, and pushes her rolling chair away before she can grab the tablet from him and ruin everything. </p><p>@hailcora: I’m not sure anyone has ever ignored my brother before … I like you. He doesn’t use social media, he’s a grumpy asshole, and he can’t stop talking about how beautiful you were and how good that book is. </p><p>@hailcora: he teaches at Georgetown and he goes to Blue Bottle Coffee Shop every Thursday at 4pm.</p><p>@hailcora: hurt him and I’ll make you regret ever looking for him. </p><p>“Allison,” he says, reaching out and dragging her chair back, “Allison, he’s <em>smart</em>, he’s a <em>professor</em>—”</p><p>“He’ll be at the coffee shop in fifteen minutes,” Allison says over his shoulder, and he stands up so quickly that the iPad clatters to the ground. It’ll take at least an hour to make it there at this time of day, and sure he’s technically still working, but there is absolutely no way he’s missing hot guy twice—or waiting a week to see him. </p><p>He drums his hands on the steering wheel the entire way there, curses himself for not ignoring Lydia and taking a car with sirens—she said he couldn’t use resources to find hot guy, not that he couldn’t use resources to go and <em>meet</em> him—and finally realizes, as he bursts through the door of the coffee shop and his feet carry him toward the back, that he still doesn’t know hot guy’s name. </p><p>“What did you think about Alex?” he blurts out, slamming his hands down on the table too hard and rattling the cup sitting in front of hot guy. </p><p>Hot guy looks up at him and Stiles suddenly realizes that he probably looks like a mess—clothes just barely passing Lydia’s dress code, hair likely sticking up from all the times he ran a nervous hand through it on the drive over, cheeks flushed from the cold and the six block jog he did because parking is a fucking wreck around the university. But he’s smiling, something slow and disbelieving, blinking from behind his glasses in a way that makes Stiles’ mouth go dry. “Alex conspiring with Margot definitely threw me, but when I reread it I could see the points—”</p><p>He reread the book. In 48 hours, he had read and then reread the book.</p><p>Stiles needs to marry him immediately. </p><p>“I’m Derek,” hot guy says, and Stiles will swear on his future grandchildren that when he takes Stiles’ hand, there are literal sparks flying. </p><p>“Stiles,” he says, and “I’m sorry for ignoring you on the plane.”</p><p>“I forgave you when I started reading the book,” Derek says. “Would you like to sit?”</p><p>He hovers by the chair for a moment before peeking into Derek’s cup and finding it empty. “I’ll go get us drinks,” he says, but he unzips his coat and tosses it over the back of the chair in case Derek thinks he’s going to walk away without handing his number over this time. </p><p>It only takes a few minutes; the barista knows Derek’s order and he’s halfway back to the table when he hears Derek’s phone ring. </p><p>“I told you not to call,” Derek says quietly, and Stiles makes his steps a little lighter, a little slower. “Yes, he’s here—yes, it’s him—yes—no, I’m not naming a child after you—good<em>bye</em>, Cora.”</p><p>He bites down on a laugh, knowing full well that the reason his phone is buzzing in his pocket is because Allison is doing the exact same thing. “I don’t know, I kinda like the name Cora,” he says, putting Derek’s cup down in front of him. </p><p>Derek’s even hotter when he blushes. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*just kidding lauren please never stop sending me tiktoks ily</p><p>catch me on <a href="https://elisela.tumblr.com/post/643653290394042368/to-the-hot-guy-on-the-plane-elisela-teen-wolf">tumblr</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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